This book explores how physicists, astronomers, chemists, and historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries employed ‘epistemic virtues’ such as accuracy, objectivity, and intellectual courage. In doing so, it takes the first step in providing an integrated history of the sciences…

Why do historians so often talk about objectivity, empathy, and fair-mindedness? What roles do such personal qualities play in historical studies? And why does it make sense to call them virtues rather than skills or habits?

What do scholars do when they talk about virtues (impartiality, accuracy) or vices (dogmatism, prejudice)?

Why did 'character', 'habit', and 'virtue' serve as key terms in late 19th and early 20th-century scholarly correspondences, biographies, and obituaries? Why did scholars around 1900 display so much interest in the working habits and character traits of what they called the 'scholarly self'?

Santideva's 8th century Mahayana Buddhist classic, the Guide to the Practices of Awakening (Bodhicaryavatara), has been a source of philosophical inspiration in the Indian and Tibetan traditions for over a thousand years.

For the third time, the Society for Nobility Studies will present the Virtus Thesis Award for Nobility Studies for the best (Research) Master’s thesis devoted to (an aspect of) the study of the nobility. To be eligible for submission, the thesis must have been produced in completion of an academic Master’s…

If idioms employed in codes of conduct could be as idiosyncratic as examples suggest, then to what extent did early modern language of vice, too, persist in this genre?

In comparing a selection of 18th-century histories to a representative sample of 19th-century histories of science, this project inquires: Which early modern vices persisted into the 19th century and to what extent were those vices embodied in anecdotes, conveyed through commonplaces, or symbolically…

This project tries to explain the persistence of this cultural repertoire by zooming in on (1) interaction between idioms (cultural repertoires) available to scholars at certain points in time, (2) mechanisms that help transmit repertoires across time and place, and (3) rhetorical purposes for which…

What evaluative languages (errors, mistakes, vices, etc.) did book reviewers employ? To what extent and on what occasions did they invoke early modern vices? And to what extent did this differ across fields or change over the course of the century?

Drawing on a broad array of sources, this project examines modern retrievals of Bacon’s idols, thereby testing Justus von Liebig’s intriguing observation, back in 1863, that Bacon’s name lived on mainly in mottos or stereotypical phrases. More importantly, it examines the rhetorical purposes served…

This project traces how, why, and under what circumstances scholars invoked the trope of “dogmatism,” especially in controversies. Relevant controversies from various fields, periods, and countries will be subjected to in-depth rhetorical analysis.

This project analyzes to what extent hodegetical textbooks relied on each other in warning their readers against vicious habits, how much continuity their catalogs of vice displayed, and to what extent vices that persisted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries were associated with easy-to-remember…

What makes a good historian? When historians raise this question, as they have done for centuries, they often do so to highlight that certain personal attitudes or dispositions are indispensable or studying the past. Yet their vieuws on what virtues, skills or competencies historians need most differ…

Hoye proposes that concerns about virtues of the sovereign are essential for understanding Hobbes's both his political thinking and his political critique.

On 18 september 2018, Jonathan Price defended his doctoral thesis 'The Egalitarian Constitution'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. A.A.M. Kinneging.

The work presented in this thesis addresses the role of the locus coeruleus (LC) - norepinephrine (NE) system in various aspects of human cognition, and the modulation of brain state.

While acknowledging prominent legal-philosophical debates, this project proposes a radically different approach to provide insights into the concept of the rule of law.

This book describes the changing roles of traditional authorities in combatting contemporary security challenges.

In the male-dominated university world, studying was often considered inappropriate for women. They were denied membership of the male student association Leids Studenten Corps ‘Virtus Concordia Fides’ (LSC). The women were on their own and they decided to unite.

This volume examines how the history of the humanities might be written through the prism of scholarly personae, understood as time- and place-specific models of being a scholar.

Lecture

Conference

How was the Scholarly Self cultivated in professorial families of the humanities, in German-speaking Europe between 1860 and 1930?

Why does the history of dogmatism deserve our attention? This open access book analyses uses of the term, following dogmatism from Victorian Britain to Cold War America, examining why it came to be regarded as a vice, and how understandings of its meaning have evolved.

Daniel Stumm defended his thesis on 16 April 2020.

Politics, Culture and National Identities investigates a wide range of national political cultures in Europe and the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This Element considers Kant's conception of self-control and the role it plays in his moral philosophy. It offers a detailed interpretation of the different terms used by Kant to explain the phenomenon of moral self-control, such as 'autocracy' and 'inner freedom'.

This article investigates the efforts of influential Turkish Muslim civil society actors to amplify the voices of Muslim women in the Netherlands.

In the History of the Roman Emperors, what does Herodian’s method of composition consist of and how does it relate to his writing intention, particularly in terms of political and moral idea(l)s?

Promotor: F.J. van Lunteren, E. Jorin

Once you have decided on your field of research, you should start looking for a supervisor as early as possible.

This Philosophy bachelor's programme offers perspectives from around the world. It will make you one of the next generation of students who will shape philosophy in the 21st century, ready to take on academic or professional challenges that call for critical thinking, analysis and argumentation skil…

This procedure is relevant for contract and external PhD candidates only.

In our lives we often have little attention or appreciation for plants, let alone the ones we commonly call weeds. This inattention for plants has been described as plant blindness. The Stoepplantjes project aspires to decrease plant blindness by changing the image of weeds and using citizen science.…

Impartiality, objectivity, honesty, and accuracy are qualities that generations of scholars have regarded as necessary for the pursuit of scholarly inquiry. Philosophers call them epistemic virtues, because these virtues facilitate the pursuit of epistemic aims such as knowledge and understanding of…

Conference

Africa has a population of 1.5 billion people. By 2050, this number is projected to rise to 2.5 billion. The continent’s impact on the global economy, societies but also on the environment, will therefore increase drastically.

Herman Paul has received a €140,000 grant from the Thorbecke Fund (KNAW) for a project entitled “The Demands of Our Time: Epochal Thinking from 1800 to the Present.”

Former leader of the Canadian opposition, world-renowned scholar and current President of Central European University (in Budapest) Prof. dr. Michael Ignatieff visited LUC The Hague on Thursday, November 25th. He was touring the Netherlands to promote his new book The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in…

‘Critical thinking’ is an expression all academics have heard of: it’s the first learning objective in the Leiden Vision on Teaching and Learning. It’s both a historical topic with roots that reach back a long way and a topical problem too. The question on everyone’s lips is whether critical thinking…

What does it take to be a good historian? What are the capacities or dispositions needed to thrive as an historian? Put differently, what are the talents, skills, and virtues that historians qua historians have to cultivate? What are the “passions” or the “vices” they are expected to resist? And how…

The Executive Board has appointed Herman Paul (Institute for History) as Professor of History of the Humanities. He will take up the role from 1 January 2019.

Over the past few hundreds of years, the world has changed radically. However, cultural stereotypes from the 17th century are still alive and well today, and even academic researchers sometimes use terms coined centuries ago. Why do they do that? Herman Paul, Professor of the History of the Humanities,…

Herman Paul of the Leiden University Institute for History receives a € 150,000 grant from the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) for a project on competitive research funding.

Op 9 juni jl. vond in de rechtenfaculteitskamer van het Leidse Academiegebouw een workshop plaats over tradities en aanpalende concepten, zoals politieke cultuur, spelregels en constitutionele conventies. Tijdens de bijeenkomst presenteerden en bediscussieerden juristen, historici, politicologen en…

Professor Herman Paul has been appointed Scientific Director of the Institute of History from 1 February 2025. ‘Especially in these times, transparency is essential.’